


Just a Reach Away

by spyglass



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Classical Music, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Felicity used to take piano lessons, Future Fic, Gen, Oliver is a dork, Pre-Relationship, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/pseuds/spyglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and short fics written in response to memes/prompts on Tumblr.</p><p>Latest: "(416):so I may or may not have had intense sex to mozart's greatest hits on vinyl... I don't know if I should be proud or just really disappointed in my nerdness"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to move some of my Tumblr prompt responses over here for a while, and I'm just now getting around to doing it. I'm going to start with my responses to the TFLN meme, although I'm going to go back and move everything over slowly. I'm not accepting prompts right now because my WIP list is waaaaay too long, but you are more than welcome to come say hello (allstartstofade.tumblr.com) and I'll open up to prompts again at some point when I get caught up on some of the other things I'm writing!
> 
> This first drabble was written for nonplatoniccirumstances/lizook12, in response to: "(352):i'm pleased to announce i can now open a bottle of wine with my shoe if called upon to do so."

"Did you have fun last night?"

Felicity groans and rolls over, reaching for the bedside table in an attempt to locate her glasses. In her slightly-hungover state, it takes a few tries to retrieve them, but when she slips them on, she’s greeted to the sight of Oliver Queen, shirtless and holding out water and aspirin. He smiles softly, concern etched across his face as he sits on the edge of their bed, and she wonders how the local gossip columnists can get it so wrong. Everything else is nice, don’t get her wrong, from the trust fund to the salmon ladder, but they're just afterthoughts that have nothing to do with him, nothing to do with why they work together. _This_ is the real fantasy.

"I have never loved you more than I do right now," she says, all seriousness as she gratefully accepts the glass and takes a long sip.

"I’m happy to hear that." Oliver laughs, running one hand along her bare arm. "Especially since we’re supposed to get married exactly one week from today."

Felicity swallows the aspirin and nods, pretending to think long and hard before acknowledging him. “Ahh yes. I do remember something about that,” she says finally. Her teasing isn’t quite as effective as she would like it to be—although certainly not the worst hangover she’s ever suffered from, the headache probably has something to do with that—but it doesn’t seem to matter.

There has to be some way to use Oliver’s resulting pout against the criminals of Starling City. Felicity has never once been able to resist it herself, and she’d always thought she was made of sterner stuff than that. (Then again, Felicity thought a lot of things before Oliver Queen waltzed into her office with a bullet-ridden laptop and a terrible cover story.)

"It’s possible I didn’t think my bachelorette party through well enough." Felicity sits up in bed, placing the now-empty glass down on one of his sports magazines before leaning in to kiss his pout away.

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she nods. "It may not have been the best idea to let my friend the chemical engineer sit next to the self-proclaimed heir to the demon at dinner, but uh, the good news is Blair and Nyssa seem to have had plenty to talk about…"

"That’s the _good_ news?” he asks, appearing more than slightly terrified at the thought of her MIT friends mixing with the League of Assassins. It seems Felicity isn’t the only one who hadn’t thought that particular point through.

"Well, you know, the good news relatively speaking." Thinking back over the course of the previous evening, she suddenly remembers an incident from the third bar they visited and adds, "Oh! And I’m pleased to announce that I can now open a bottle of wine with my shoe if called upon to do so. You can thank your sister for that, by the way."

"I’ll be sure to do that." Oliver grins then, taking her left hand in his right, something he’d been doing more and more often since he first slid his ring into place. "But potential international incidents and apparent lack of bottle openers aside, it was a good night?"

"Next Saturday night will be better," she says, her mind running through the thousands of tasks she still had to take care of between now and the wedding. If not for the fact that she already had a headache, she certainly would have had one now. "I know I wouldn’t be the first bride to say this, but next time I get married, I am definitely eloping."

With that, the pout makes its second appearance in mere minutes as he asks indignantly, “Wait! The _next_ time you get married?”

"Yep," she answers immediately, trying to sound as serious as possible. "I figure I’ll give you a couple of years before I’ll be ready to move on to husband number two, though."

Oliver crawls back under the covers and pulls her against his chest, where she settles in comfortably as he pretends to consider this for a minute. “Then I guess I’ll just have to do my best with the time that I have,” he says finally. “But you’re responsible for telling Sara and Nyssa when you throw me over. They left a very detailed message for me last night about just what’s going to happen to me if I ever hurt you.”

"I will protect you from them," she promises solemnly, trying to ignore the gentle hum of his breath in her ear as his chest shakes with silent laughter. It’s easy for moments like this to get lost in the preparation, in the endless list of things that must be done for them to have the wedding that everyone expects of them, when what really matters isn’t the facade they present to everyone else but the life they’re building together. She allows herself a few moments to remember this before tilting her head to kiss him long and deep. When they break apart, he’s grinning broadly, eyes alight, and she grins back before leaning closer to whisper in his ear:

"Who needs an overprotective biological father when you’ve got the League of Assassins on your side?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, for freaoscanlin: "(832): Im trying to find an appropriate gift to your mom for getting both you and your sister on birth control within a week, any suggestions?"

"Relax, dad!"

Oliver stared at his fifteen year old daughter in disbelief. He wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to relax when he was very clearly holding birth control pills in his hands. Birth control pills with his daughter’s name on the prescription. Oliver knew that his children were growing up, of course, but as much as he and Felicity strove to be parents who were open and available no matter the issue, he was having a hard time reconciling the little girl he brought home with the hospital from the teenager who stood before him.

He took a deep breath, employing one of Felicity’s tried and true techniques and counting back from three. “Are you okay, Mia? Have you… talked to your mother at least?”

"I’m alright, dad," she assured him. "Mom took me to the doctor last week because I’ve been having really bad cramps and she thought maybe they could give me something to help. She took Ellie, too. I’m not, you know…"

"Oh," Oliver said, relieved. He had good children who were intelligent and responsible and far better than he had been at their age—a fact he attributed entirely to Felicity’s guidance, although she insisted he played just as much a part as she did (and that there might've been some luck involved)—but that didn’t make the prospect of them growing up any easier. _Because_ he remembered what he had been like at their age, he worried about them all the more. “Okay, well. You know you can talk to me or your mother about anything, right? We don’t ever want you or your sister to feel like you have to hide from us.”

Mia hugged him then, a rare spontaneous gesture Oliver wanted to savor.

"I do know, Dad," she said, her voice somewhat muffled against his chest. "But when I need to talk about _this_ , I’m probably going to go to Mom first. Or maybe Aunt Thea or Aunt Sara.”

He pulled back just enough so that he could look her in the eye. “As long as you talk to somebody, you hear me?”

"I will. I promise," she answered seriously. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, offering a quick, "You’re the best!" before rushing down the stairs at the sound of the front door opening.

Oliver stood at the top of the stairwell, watching as Felicity and Ellie returned from their trip to locate the perfect prom dress. From the sound of Ellie’s excited chattering and Mia’s intermittent questions, they must have been successful.

That, however, gave Oliver another thing to worry about: Mia mentioned that Ellie had visited the doctor as well, so it was a good thing that Andrew Diggle was only standing in as her prom date because they’d been friends since the day she was born.

At least, he certainly hoped that was all there was to it.

He would ask Felicity, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requested by lazyevening: "(626):Actually going to jail after your wedding is NOT part of the plan."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This could be considered a continuation of the first chapter in this collection, although I didn't write it that way. This is the last of the TFLN prompts (for now), but I've got several other memes to go back through and archive here.

"You know, when I put my dress on this afternoon, this was not how I saw the night ending," Felicity says, emerging from the bathroom dressed in her spare workout clothes. She immediately heads to her computers and checks in on the searches she’s been running.

Oliver, who had already traded in his tux for his green leather suit, walks up behind her to lean over and kiss her neck. “It’s not how I saw the night ending either,” he whispers regretfully. “Believe me. I had high hopes of taking that dress off of you myself.”

"On the bright side, no one will expect Oliver Queen to have walked out of his own wedding reception to put in an appearance as the Arrow and break up an after hours bank robbery." Felicity grins as she types in a few commands and pulls the city grid up. "Looks like they’re breaking in at Adams and 15th," she says, twisting her new rings as though they’ve been sitting on her finger for months instead of mere hours. "So do me a favor and don’t do anything to get yourself arrested? I’ve already changed my plans for the night enough, and bailing you out of jail is definitely not on my to do list."

"I’ll do my best," he teases, rotating her chair so that she’s facing him before tugging her up to her feet and kissing her soundly. He rests his forehead against hers when he pulls away, a few moments for just the two of them, before he picks up his bow and quiver.

"Digg and Sara are already on their way," she says after checking her phone. "Everyone else is still at the reception covering for them. I’ll have everything ready to disable security on site by the time you get there. Be careful, all of you."

As has become their custom, Felicity secures his mask and kisses him once more, for luck.

He takes one last glance at the security schematics for the bank and then meets her eyes before heading towards the back entrance.

"And Oliver," she calls out, right as he reaches the doorway, "if you manage to take care of this fast enough, I might get back in the dress just so you can take it off me."

Oliver doesn’t need any additional motivation.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a delay on uploading more of these, but this one was for lizook12/nonplatoniccircumstances in response to the prompt: "Felicity/Oliver-(416):so I may or may not have had intense sex to mozart's greatest hits on vinyl... I don't know if I should be proud or just really disappointed in my nerdness"
> 
> This was really fun for me to write, so I hope you enjoy :)

Oliver notices the music the moment he walks into the foundry.

It’s not uncommon for there to be music playing whenever Felicity is around. It’s something he’s come to look forward to; a sign of her presence, one he associates with the precious moments when it’s just the two of them. He’s grown accustomed to her usual musical tastes, and while he’s sure he’ll never be able to identify them by artist, he’s noticed that what she’s listening to often depends on her mood. There’s the upbeat pop music she listens to when she’s working through a tedious task and needs a pick me up, and the softer, lilting female voices she gravitates to when she’s stressed and needs to relax a little. He’s come to expect those, to look forward to the evenings when she might even sing along.

Tonight however, what catches his attention isn’t the fact that there’s music echoing through the new foundry, but her particular _choice_ of music. It’s something he’s never heard her listen to before.

The sound of string instruments reaches his ears, and suddenly Oliver wishes he had paid more attention on the occasions when his parents dragged him to some society event hosted by the Starling City Symphony Orchestra. While he can only identify the piece as classical, he takes in the slight sway of her body as she moves in time with the melody, and he’s certain she’s familiar with the specific era of the composer and likely several little-known facts about his or her life.

Oliver has always been struck by the way Felicity seems to know something about everything, so it hardly surprises him that she continues to surprise him. He lets the music wash over him, feeling perfectly content just to be near her in this moment. For all that she hates mysteries, he’s found that he does not as long as the mystery is _her._ He thinks he could be happy solving her mystery for as long as she’ll let him.

He’s halfway down the stairs when she spins around to greet him, her eyes bright and her smile wide. Whatever the reason for this music, the association is clearly a positive one. He wants to ask her, but he isn’t quite sure how.

"Hey." He offers a smile of his own in return, smaller but no less affectionate than hers. "This is different," he observes. It’s a poor way of asking the question, but she seems to understand anyway. (For all that she often surprises him, this simple fact does not; Felicity always understands, even when she does not agree.)

"Oh!" A blush crosses her face briefly, then disappears. "I can turn this off or change to something different if you want. I was just, well… It’s not important."

He wants to tell her that it is, that if it’s important to her he wants to know, but instead all he manages is, “No, don’t change it.”

"Okay."

She exhales her reply, and the look that crosses her face is half-embarrassed, half-apologetic. Oliver instinctively places a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He hopes the gesture somehow manages to suffice when words aren’t quite enough because he never wants her to be anything less than exactly who she is.

"It reminds me of my mother," he says quietly, surprised at how the admission doesn’t hurt as much as he might expect. "She loved classical music. One of her favorite parts of planning big events was working with the musicians to pick out exactly what would be played. I’m sure it drove them crazy, but it made her happy."

Oliver thinks the gentle sound of Felicity’s laughter is the best response he could ask for.

"She was always trying to get me to take lessons," he adds, watching the mirth on her face as he speaks in self-deprecation. "It didn’t matter to her that I had no musical talents whatsoever. She was convinced I should learn how to play an instrument. Any instrument."

"I’m sure that went over incredibly well with you."

"I think I went through four instruments before she finally gave up," he says a little regretfully. He may not have had much in the way of musical abilities, but he probably could have tried harder.

"I used to play the piano," Felicity offers, and she looks away for a moment. Her use of the past tense does not escape his notice. "I didn’t always take lessons because we, uh, couldn’t always afford them, but there was this guy who used to play at the hotel who would sometimes teach me before his shift if there wasn’t too much going on."

Oliver feels like an ass in the worst possible way. In spite of his recent temporary brush with financial troubles, it’s so easy for him to forget that the world she grew up in is entirely different from the world he knows. That an opportunity he threw away without a second thought is one she would have treasured.

And while it’s easy to forget their differences because they’ve never mattered to her, he becomes painfully aware of the three pianos currently sitting in storage. Pianos that sat in his parents house untouched for years, with the occasional exception of the grand piano during parties. He hadn’t been quite sure why he kept all three when he was moving the remainder of his family’s possessions to storage, but now he wonders if the upright might fit in the study in Felicity’s townhouse.

"I’d love to hear you play sometime," he says, a strange feeling akin to hope blooming somewhere deep inside him. He can picture her sitting at the piano bench clear as day, imagines that she must have been quite talented, given her tendency to pour herself into everything she loves. Maybe most people would not expect it from someone who describes herself as awkward… at best, but there’s a quiet elegance to her that most people overlook.

(It has not, however, escaped his notice.)

"I haven’t played in years. I think I’d be pretty rusty." With a wistful smile, she adds, "I did date a cellist when I was in college, though. He was a grad student at the Boston Conservatory, so I guess that’s where I picked up my love of string quartets."

"Oh?"

All Felicity offers in return for his teasing is a quick shrug of her shoulders. “Don’t knock it,” she warns, but her tone is good-natured and as she spins back to face her computer screens, he can see the smile playing against her lips.

Although he wants to know more, he files it in the back of his mind for later, and instead he focuses on the sight of her smile as she turned back to her work. After the struggles of the past two years, he cherishes the sight of her smiles now more than ever, is grateful that he has a chance to see them more often.

He sheds his shirt and moves toward the salmon ladder, still acutely aware of her presence only a few feet away and the sound of her music filling up the space in the foundry. As he stretches, he listens carefully as she hums a few bars in perfect time, and even as the metal bars clang and he climbs upward, he hears her words clear as day as she remarks to herself that _most people wouldn’t knock classical music so much if they knew that it made surprisingly excellent mood music_.

If Oliver hadn’t been paying such close attention, he wouldn’t have heard her at all, and a part of him wishes he hadn’t. He’s been fighting what he feels for her in earnest since the night he took down Slade, but in truth, he’s been fighting it since the moment he walked into her office with a busted laptop and a poor excuse for a lie. He can’t fight it any longer, and an image comes to him unbidden.

The next thing he knows, he falls off the salmon ladder.


End file.
